


Five Rivers

by JHSC



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (grudgingly), Amnesia, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Drowning, Flagrant Abuse of Metaphor, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Less Secret Water Imagery, M/M, Prosopagnosia, Super Secret Gender Analysis, The Five Rivers of the Underworld, There is no mid-credits scene only Zuul, Traumatic Brain Injury as Narrative Tool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-12 13:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13548153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC
Summary: Bucky’s a block and a half away when he sees Steve — and it’s unmistakably Steve, all narrow shoulders and flailing fists and the 13-year-old adolescent rage he carries with him like a Roman banner — starting a fight with the O’Reilly brothers on the boardwalk along the East River. He speeds up his steps when he sees Steve land a solid first strike on Wally and get a fist to the mouth in payback. He breaks into a jog when Eddie grabs ahold of Steve’s arm, twisting it behind his back as he struggles, giving Wally the opportunity to land another hit to Steve’s face.He starts to run, to sprint, when Steve pulls away from Eddie, over-balances, and tips head-first over the curb and into the water ten feet below.





	1. Styx

**Author's Note:**

  * For [praximeter (Zimario)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimario/gifts).



> This work is complete, and new chapters will be posted once a week through the end of February. Many thanks to [praximeter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimario/pseuds/praximeter) for basically midwifing this baby into existence, and to the Sprinters team on the Stucky Discord.

Bucky’s a block and a half away when he sees Steve — and it’s unmistakably Steve, all narrow shoulders and flailing fists and the 13-year-old adolescent rage he carries with him like a Roman banner — starting a fight with the O’Reilly brothers on the boardwalk along the East River. He speeds up his steps when he sees Steve land a solid first strike on Wally and get a fist to the mouth in payback. He breaks into a jog when Eddie grabs ahold of Steve’s arm, twisting it behind his back as he struggles, giving Wally the opportunity to land another hit to Steve’s face.

He starts to run, to sprint, when Steve pulls away from Eddie, over-balances, and tips head-first over the curb and into the water ten feet below.

He runs. He can hear his feet echo on the pavement, can taste the sharpness of the cold March air with every breath, can feel the pounding of his heart behind his ribs as he inches closer and closer to where Wally and Eddie are standing, gormless and aghast, staring down at the water uselessly.

Bucky rips his coat off, dropping it carelessly somewhere behind him on his path to Steve, and bursts between the O’Reilly’s to follow Steve down feet-first. He doesn’t look before he jumps.

He hits the water. The temperature is cold enough to shock the breath out of his lungs. He can’t see Steve on the surface. He takes a breath. He dives. He looks for Steve’s white shirt, blonde hair, fair skin. He can’t see it.

He surfaces. Takes another breath. Dives again. Dives deeper. Opens his eyes and searches. No white shirt. No blonde hair. No fair skin.

He surfaces again. Takes another breath. Ignores the shouting of the O’Reilly’s and his lungs and the prickles of ice in his fingers and toes. Dives again. Opens his eyes. Kicks harder. Swims deeper.

There — a flash of white through the cold, murky water. Is is Steve? He kicks harder. Swims deeper. The light spot in the darkness of the river becomes more clear, coalescing into a small body, narrow shoulders, unclenched fists, blonde hair floating around him like a halo, like those dead saints emblazoned on the walls of Steve’s church.

Bucky grabs those shoulders with both hands, and heaves.

They break the surface of the water together, and Bucky can see the light again. There are hands reaching down from the boardwalk, more than just the young teenagers who’d been standing there a moment ago.

Steve’s head lolls back onto Bucky’s shoulder for a moment, eyes closed and peaceful. Then the dock workers are pulling him away, pulling them apart, pulling them out of the river and onto dry land.

Steve isn’t moving, isn’t coughing, isn’t breathing. Bucky wants to go back under the water.

Bucky coughs, and stares, and shivers under the coat someone has thrown over him. He watches, listless and spent, while a policeman lifts Steve’s arms, massages his chest, tries to force the water out and air back in.

It works. Steve coughs. Brown water dribbles out of his mouth onto the concrete. A cheer runs through the collected crowd. Someone pulls Bucky to standing, people start shaking his hand.

Bucky watches as Steve coughs, but doesn’t open his eyes. Doesn’t wake up.

*

It’s hours before he can see Steve again. He spends the entire wait in the hospital, off to the side, out of the way, waiting to hear if Steve’s tenacity, his stubbornness, can outlast the time he spent under the icy surface of the river. If Steve can maybe, just maybe, win out against death yet again.

Thinking of Steve’s pale face under the water, his body limp on the concrete of the boardwalk, Bucky’s enduring faith in Steve’s resilience has never been put so strongly to the test.

Their mothers are both here. Steve’s had gotten to the hospital half an hour after Steve and Bucky had. Sarah had blown into the room like the first of March, still in her nurse’s uniform from the hospital across the borough, and swept Bucky into her arms like he was a child again, leaning back and lifting him off his feet. She’d kissed him, hard, on the cheek, and then set him down.

“Thank you, my love,” she’d said.

Bucky’d nodded, trapped by her gaze, her eyes just as blue and intense as her son’s.

Then, like the hurricane she was, she’d swept out again, off to find and sit vigil over the person they both loved most in the world.

Bucky’s mother had arrived an hour later with clean clothes, a blanket, and his coat, the latter retrieved from the ground by one of the O’Reilly brothers and returned to Winifred in apology. She’d hustled him into his fresh clothes and sat him down on a bench and hasn’t left his side since. There’s chores to do, the girls to manage, Shabbat dinner to get on the table, but Winnie hasn’t left his side and it makes his eyes burn to think of it.

She nudges him now, and stands. Bucky raises his head slowly, wincing at the ache in his neck, and gets to his feet when he realizes Sarah is coming back down the hallway again. Her footsteps are slow and tired, the way they are when she arrives home after a double shift, or when a patient she’s fond of has passed on.

It’s not until he lands hard on the bench that Bucky realizes his legs have given out. Winnie grabs his shoulders before he can fall the rest of the way to the floor, and Sarah joins her, pale hands pressing him up again.

“He’s woken up,” Sarah says without preamble, and Bucky’s heart jumps from the floor to his throat. “He’s going to be alright, love.”

Bucky shakes his head. “He’s going to get pneumonia.”

“Of course he will,” Sarah replies, trading a glance with Winnie and smiling gently. “But he’ll be fine. Come see for yourself.”

She takes his hand and pulls him up. Winnie stands with him, and the two women each take an arm, leading him down the hallway, their solid support on either side. He feels like a bridge suspended between them, like he’s going to sway and swing further with every step until he’s torn apart, until he collapses into the gorge.

“You’ll feel better as soon as you see him,” Winnie reassures him, like she can see down into the very deepest recesses of his heart. “It’ll knock those bad memories right out of your head, seeing that he’s alright, hearing his voice.”

Bucky nods, and then they’re inside the ward, heading toward a curtained-off section at the far end.

“He may be a little fuzzy,” Sarah warns him gently. “Don’t fuss yourself over it. Just be yourself.”

Bucky nods again. Sarah and Winnie stop at the curtain. Bucky pulls it aside and steps alone into the quiet space behind it, and looks at the pale figure on the bed.

Steve is propped up by pillows, covered from toe to chin with brown wool blankets that rise and fall gently over his chest as he breathes. His hair is dry and combed, not floating in a halo around him. His cheeks are pink and warm, not cold and still.

His eyes are closed, though. Bucky reaches out slowly with his left hand. Places it gently on Steve’s chest, so that he can feel it move, so that he knows it isn’t an illusion, Steve is breathing, his eyes aren’t tricking him.

Steve’s breath hitches, and Bucky shifts to take in his face even as his eyelashes flicker and flutter, as the crease between his brows curls up tighter, as he wakes up and forces his eyes open.

Steve opens his eyes and stares at Bucky blankly, eyebrows furrowing in confusion and mouth curving down, down, down. He looks at Bucky like he doesn’t know him.

“Hey,” Bucky says, speaking around the Gordian knot tangling in his throat. “What’s this about going for a swim without inviting me?”

Steve closes his eyes for a long moment, brow smoothing out. “Bucky,” he whispers, voice low and raw like it always is when he’s been sick and coughing for days.

He opens his eyes again, and the change is stark. He stares hungrily, like he’s taking in every square inch of Bucky’s features, memorizing them, branding them into his mind so he’ll never, ever lose them again.

“You know me,” Bucky manages under the scrutiny. Every word he speaks seems to relax Steve further, so he adds, “If you wanted to go swimming, we could have just snuck into the YMCA again. I’m sure by now they’ve forgotten about last time.”

“I don’t remember,” Steve says. “Today. They said, they said you pulled me from the river.”

Bucky shrugs, because if he says anything real — about the fear in in his gut as he ran, the terror as he dove and dove and dove again — he might fall back down to the floor again, right here in front of Steve, and then he’ll just have to die. “Yeah.”

Steve shakes his head. “I don't remember.”

Bucky pulls himself up onto the bed by Steve’s knees, like it’s just another day, just another simple illness. He doesn't think about that long, heavy stare of confusion, the utter lack of recognition Steve held for him before he'd spoken up.

Instead, he says, “You were already arguing the the O’Reilly brothers by the time I got to…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All comments are welcome and appreciated, including but not limited to: screaming, cussing, emoticons, emojis, gifs, book reports, extensive book reports, gibberish, and keysmash.
> 
> Find me at [jhscdood.tumblr.com!](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com)


	2. Phlegethon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sick and I have been given to understand that external validation is an acceptable substitute for air, so, here y'go.

*

Bucky’s underwater.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he took a breath, since he saw sunlight. He’s trapped beneath the surface, down in the cold, dark deep. The water rushes in his ears, into his skull. Every word he mumbles floats away from him in a torrent of bubbles; he watches them float up, up, up until they’re out of sight.

He’s grateful for the water. The water keeps him safe. It sweeps away the masked men who took him, who brought him here. It sweeps away the needles, the tubes, the scalpels and the clamps and the lights and the straps. Or maybe it sweeps Bucky away, carries him out of the oubliette and away, to the sea, to the ocean, maybe even all the way to New York, up the East River to Brooklyn.

Maybe the wave will surge all the way up Bedford Ave, then recede, depositing him on his mother’s doorstep where he belongs.

He doesn’t imagine he’ll still be alive, by then. But it would be nice to rest, to go home. To have the chevra kadisha come and watch over his body before the funeral, for his mother to sit shiva and light a candle for him every year on this day, and his only obligation, his only responsibility, is to be remembered in peace.

The doctor rushes by — an eel, slithering his way through the murk like it’s his domain to rule over — and for once, doesn’t stop to look at Bucky, to squint at him with suspicious little eyes and make the pain ratchet ever higher, until the water drags Bucky down, down, down. The doctor rushes past, and then slips out again, heedless of the man trapped in the deep. The water stills.

_Sergeant... 3... 2... 5…_

He imagines the words breaking the distant surface, the sound echoing across the water, maybe startling some seabirds, confusing a lone fisherman…

Another body swims by. This one stops, though. The pale face stares down at him, words gurgling out of the mouth into the water. They don’t make sense. They don’t make sense, until they do. “Bucky? Oh my god…”

The face comes closer. Bucky stares, wondering at this poor soul who has the bad luck to be drowning down here with him, who’s sunk as deep as he has. Bucky stares, because he swears he’s been here before, been underwater with this face before. “Is that…”

The man does something across Bucky’s body, something that makes him suddenly float free, not pinned down by the weight of the water. The water? Wait...

“It’s me, it’s Steve,” the man says, voice familiar even if the shape of his body isn’t.

“Steve,” Bucky parrots back, thinking of _his_ Steve, the Steve he loves, who is warm and dry and safe back home. Steve, who fell into the East River once, but it was okay because Bucky pulled him out, Bucky pulled him out and Sarah kissed him for it and Steve woke up, he woke up. The water didn’t take Steve away that time, didn’t keep him. It kept a part of him, took it as payment, but that was okay, because it gave the rest of Steve back, in the end.

Steve never admitted that something had been taken, that something was gone. He never talked about the way faces never seemed to stick in his memory anymore. That he could meet a person two, three, a dozen times over and never seem to recognize them until they spoke, and Steve could match their voice to their identity.

Steve never talked about the way even Bucky’s face failed to become familiar, even Sarah’s. His eyes would sweep them up and down, searching their clothing for clues to their identities, and he’d scowl and dissemble until they said, _Good morning, my love_ , or _Shabbat shalom, Stevie_ , or _Sometimes I think you like getting punched_.

Sarah told Bucky, once, that a part of Steve’s brain had been damaged by all the time underwater. That going so long without air had made part of it die. That Steve was lucky to have only lost this much. That he could have lost so much more — that not being able to remember his mother’s face was a small price to pay when the only other option was never waking up again.

But Steve never talked about it, and Bucky was always careful to wear the same clothes that Steve knew, to wear his hat at the same jaunty angle, and to call out to him first, so that Steve would always, always know it was him.

“Come on,” the man says. The memory recedes. The man pulls him upright, and the tide pulls back, leaving Bucky suddenly stranded, suddenly aware that he’s not submerged, he’s not anywhere underwater at all.

He’s at the Hydra prison camp, and Steve isn’t at home at all. Steve is here, Steve is _here_ , and he’s— “Steve.”

“I thought you were dead,” Steve says, hands clinging to him desperately, like he’s the one who just pulled Bucky from the river, limp and wan and insensate.

Bucky takes him in — the height of him, the breadth of him, the ease of breaths in and out of his lungs — and says, “I thought you were smaller.”

*

He’s seeing things. He knows he’s still seeing things. First the water, the table, the eel-doctor. Then Steve, body pink and healthy and strong enough to haul him off the table and drag him down endless hallways. Then the — man? — who’d ripped his own face off and dropped it down into the burning factory far below.

The factory is burning, and Bucky doesn’t know if anything is real.

He edges down the beam, the makeshift bridge across a river of fire, that will let them out and away from this hellscape. He doesn’t look back at Steve, afraid he’ll disappear if he does, trusting that Steve will follow, just as he always has. That’s the way it’s always been for them: one of them leads, the other follows. Doesn’t matter which, so long as someone takes that first step.

The fire below roils like a raging river, like the ocean during a hurricane. There’d been a storm on the Atlantic when Bucky was first crossing over to fight the war in Europe. Him and a thousand other infantrymen, locked in a floating casket, waiting to find out if they were going to be hurled to the bottom of the sea or land safely ashore at Serifos. It was the latter, in the end, and they were all sent off to slay the Gorgon or be turned to stone.

The beam shudders, and falls, and Bucky dives.

He pulls himself up and over the railing, only then looking back across the impossible chasm. “Gotta be a rope or something!”

“Just go!” Steve shouts, waving his arm at him as another explosion rocks the factory; they’re running out of time, running out of air to breathe. “Get out of here!”

Maybe it’s all real. Or maybe this is all just a hallucination, and Bucky is still tied down and trussed up and dreaming, and Steve isn’t really here, isn’t really in any danger, isn’t trapped at the edge of a burning canyon too wide to cross. But Bucky’s never left Steve to fight a battle by himself, and he’s not about to start now.

“No! Not without you!” The railing shudders as he slams his palms down on it, suddenly furious that Steve might think he would leave him, _could_ leave him.

He sees that realization cross Steve’s features — either they both get out, or neither of them do — and then his face twists, the way it always does when there’s something he thinks he can’t do but doesn’t want to admit it.

Bucky watches Steve bend the solid metal railing out of the way. Watches him step back as far as he can, give himself the longest run-up possible. Watches him sprint across the corrugated steel platform and launch himself, shield and all, into the air. Watches him come closer and closer, watches the arc of his leap toward this side of the chasm, watches another explosion bloom up behind him, watches his descent — he’s not going to make it — he didn’t jump far enough — he’s going to miss the other side and Bucky is going to watch him fall to his death —

Bucky reaches out into the void and grabs Steve’s hands.

For a second, Steve dangles in the air like a water droplet about to fall from the tip of a needle, Bucky bent double over the railing, metal digging into his hips and shoulders aching with the weight. Then he finds it in himself to _pull_ , pull until Steve is over the side, until Bucky falls backward with the force of it, taking Steve with him, and he’s lying on the platform with this strange, giant Steve in his arms and everything hurts but nothing, nothing hurts, because Steve is here and Steve is breathing.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All comments are welcome and appreciated, including but not limited to: screaming, cussing, emoticons, emojis, gifs, book reports, extensive book reports, gibberish, and keysmash.
> 
> Find me at [jhscdood.tumblr.com!](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com)


	3. Lethe

*

He notices it first during the march back to Allied territory: men coming up to report in with Steve, Steve addressing them by name before sending them off again. But Bucky’s head hurts, and his eyes hurt, and he doesn’t know how many days it’s been since he slept or ate. He sticks close to Steve’s side, nods when Steve says, “I’ll tell you everything once we’re safe,” and puts it out of his mind.

Steve hasn’t recognized Bucky’s face for more than a decade, and Bucky twisted his world around to make sure that that didn’t ever have to matter, so that the slow blink and furrowed brow Steve gave everyone at first glance never settled on Bucky for long, that the spark of recognition would wash away any uncertainty in a heartbeat.  

He sees it again when they arrive at camp, when the British woman hasn’t even spoken, isn’t even wearing anything to set herself apart, and yet Steve’s eyes light up with recognition, familiarity, affection. Steve knows who she is before she’s even said a word, and that’s wrong, wrong, wrong, because Steve hasn’t known someone’s face on sight since he was thirteen, since before he spent endless minutes drowning, killing that part of his brain forever.

It’s later, much later, before he gets a chance to mention it, before he’s drunk enough to ask about the thing they’ve never spoken of since Steve woke up in the hospital and didn’t know who Bucky was.

Carter’s gone again, Steve’s new squad are two and a half sheets to the wind, and Bucky thinks he’s finally swallowed enough liquid courage to say, “You knew me.”

“Buck?” Steve asks, looking up from his drink. The alcohol doesn’t seem to have touched him at all; he looks as sober as Bucky doesn’t want to be ever again.

“You knew me, back there. You knew them,” he jerks his head toward the motley crew at the far end of the tavern, “and you knew _her_.”

Steve leans back in his chair, sets his shoulders in that familiar wiggle that means he’s uncomfortable and about to tell a whopper. “I don’t know what you—”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Bucky interrupts. He tries to make it come out angry, irritated, demanding, but his voice is too soft, and he can’t muster up anything stronger than the hurt and confusion tangling up in his chest right where he keeps his love. “No name tags, no flowers in the lapel, no catch-phrases, but you still— you still knew them all on sight. That hasn’t happened since—”

“The river,” Steve agrees, for the first time acknowledging what happened to him while he was down there in the estuarine deep. He looks back down at his glass. “I know.”

“Well?”

Steve gives his explanation, then. His fantastical, science fiction, straight out of _Future Fantasia_ explanation, replete with mad scientists and magical formulas and, of course, as always, evil villains trying to take over the world. If he were to write it all up into a narrative and submit it to _Weird Tales_ , they’d probably write back and say, _This is a little out there, don’t you think?_

“When the tube reopened and I looked around at everyone,” Steve is saying, “I knew who they all were. No searching around for hints, or waiting for them to say something. I just knew.”

“It healed everything,” Bucky says dumbly. The asthma, the scoliosis, the ache in his joints left over from rheumatic fever in ‘28, the deafness in his left ear he got from scarlet fever in ‘34, and this, this too.

Steve nods. “So when I went looking for you, they told me you were dead, but I knew what to look for. I remembered your face, again. It was a miracle, but...”

“But it wasn’t enough for you.” Bucky shakes his head. “Why settle for one miracle when you can go for two?”

“There’s nothing wrong with a double play and you know it,” Steve says, bossy the way he always is when baseball becomes part of the discussion. Then he sobers, and his voice is low, rough, when he says, “I knew it was you the moment I saw you on that table. I don’t know how I could ever have forgotten.”

Bucky feels heat rise to his face like steam from a kettle. He does his own version of the shoulder wiggle, leaning forward onto the bar so that Steve can’t see his face. At least Steve will remember it, now. “You technically drowned for ten minutes, it’s not like you ever meant it.”

“Well, it’s fixed,” Steve says, and the moment has swept by, like rainwater into a storm drain. “It won’t be a problem anymore.”

Bucky figures Steve’s new, healthy, strong body comes with a whole new set of even bigger problems, but he doesn’t say anything about the portents lurking in the back of his mind; he thinks… fears… _knows_ Steve won’t believe him.

*

Bucky had eventually gotten used to Steve’s face-blindness, and now he finds himself getting used to it being gone. Getting used to Steve recognizing him on sight, speaking to him first, calling him by name from across a conference table or a tavern bar or a trench. Steve’s body may be different now, able to put actual force behind every punch, but he’s probably getting into fewer fights here on the front than back home in New York, with its bullies in every movie theater, bar, shop, automat and newsstand, if you believe how Steve tells it.

As a teenager, Steve used to practice his art skills by drawing his mother (and Bucky) from life, eyes flicking back and forth between person and paper with every blink. Then he’d carefully caption each drawing with their names, never admitting it was the only way for him to know, later, whose likeness he had pinned down to the paper. Sarah Rogers died, and it was only when his eyes were resting directly on those pages that Steve could remember what she looked like when she was smiling.

Now, Steve keeps a picture of Agent Carter in his compass, and he doesn’t have to put a label on it to know who she is. Bucky thinks that alone might be worth it all of this fuss, that Steve can keep Peggy’s face in his mind moment after moment, can remember Bucky’s, can remember Sarah’s, Winnie’s, Becca’s…

He doesn’t doubt that it’s worth it when they storm Hydra stronghold after Hydra stronghold, blowing up Hydra’s armories and laboratories, blowing holes into Hydra’s walls and bodies.

He doesn’t doubt that it’s worth it when Steve comes up with his cockamamie plan to zipline over a gorge a thousand feet deep onto a moving train, trading quips about the Cyclone as they watch a pair of ravens soar in an artful swoop across the canyon, their shadows stark against the ice and snow.

He doesn’t doubt that it’s worth it when he runs out of bullets trapped alone in a boxcar and Steve has to rescue him with an extra gun and a distraction; when the souped-up Hydra soldier blows a hole in the side of the car and Bucky picks up Steve’s shield to protect him; when a blast knocks him out of the train, and he’s clinging to the side, and Steve abandons sense and safety and reason to crawl out after him, to call his name, to reach for him…

He doesn’t doubt that it’s worth it when he falls.

He has a chance to wonder, for a brief moment, frozen air swirling around him, arms reaching out to grasp at nothing, if somehow Steve will be there to pull him from the river.

He takes a deep breath.

Then he hits

the water

and

f

o

r

g

 

e

  
  


t

  
  


 

s

 

.

 

.

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *
> 
> All comments are loved and treasured, even if they are keysmashes and/or cussing.
> 
> Find me at [jhscdood.tumblr.com!](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com)


	4. Cocytus

*

The feel of the painted metal disc hitting his palm sends a jolt of familiarity through his body, and over its rim he stares at the unknown man who threw it. Familiar, too, are the movements that have him launching the shield back at its owner with the kind of precise aim that only comes through lengthy practice, through muscle memory, knowledge that can only be gained through lived experience.

He throws the shield back and puts the strange feeling out of his mind. It is a distraction from his mission.

*

Two targets, level six.

He fights them both, one after the other. They’re both smart, fast, strong.

He’s stronger.

The disc, the shield, is back. His target fights with it expertly, but he blocks every strike, can predict every move before it begins. It’s almost like steps in a dance they both know, like they’ve fought before not once or twice, but dozens of times, hundreds.

If they’ve fought before, this viciously, how are they both still alive?

Then he gains control of the shield, and the jolt of familiarity sweeps through him even more strongly, like a wave cresting over his head and then submerging him for long moments before he breaks the surface again, and the tide pulls back.

He doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s distracting him from his mission. He pushes it out of his mind.

The target manages to gain the upper hand for a moment and throws him, ripping his mask off in the process. He pulls himself to his feet and looks back, feeling suddenly naked without the plastic and kevlar covering his face.

The target has frozen, face a rictus of shock. “Bucky?”

The sound echoes; he hears it as if from a long way away, as if underwater, and the target is standing above the surface, shouting. He hears it, and something deep inside clenches hard, as if taking a breath, as if preparing to dive. It doesn’t make sense. It’s distracting from the mission. He tries to push it out of his mind, but instead, the question pours out of him — “Who the hell is Bucky?”

It’s distracting from the mission. It’s distracting from the mission. The target is distracted, focus on the mission, ignore the roaring in the ears and _shoot him_ —

The third target appears from above, too late to dodge, and knocks him into the street before he can get the shot off. Then the second target launches the grenade. It’s three against one, his mask is gone, operational security is compromised, he is distracted from the mission, and the strike team is converging on their location.

The grenade hits the asphalt, and he uses it as a chance to run.

*

He’s in the chair, but he’s not. He’s underwater, but he’s not. He’s falling, he’s being dragged through the snow, he’s strapped to a table… but he’s not.

A voice, far away, calling for him. A voice he almost recognizes, a voice from the past he can’t ever remember.

Then here, now, a strike to his face, pain blooming across his cheekbone, bringing him back to the present like cold water dumped over his head.

“The man on the bridge,” he asks, because he cannot _not_ ask, because the shield was familiar, the fight was familiar, the voice the face the-man-the-namewasfamiliar. “Who was he?”

The commander says, “You met him earlier this week on another assignment,” and it’s the truth, but it’s not everything, because he felt this way before, and this is more than a chance meeting, this is more than a second meeting, this is more than what he knows.

This is an ocean of knowing, and his mind is a sieve, thoughts and memories draining away as soon as he tries to capture them. The only thing he knows to be true is, “I knew him.”

The commander says, “Your work has been a gift to mankind.”

He tries to pay attention, except his mind keeps wandering back to that face, a face that looks familiar, but… wrong? Like a warped reflection, he sees the man’s face again: the way it was during the fight, clenched in concentration. The way it fell when the mask came off, overcome with hurt and confusion.

Other images: that face again, but on a much smaller body. A body tucked up in a bed under rough brown blankets. A body, limp and pale and blue, lying on hard concrete. And every time, that face, one he can’t possibly put a name to.

“But I knew him,” he says, and the one thing he knows is that’s the wrong thing to say.

The commander says, “Prep him.”

The commander says, “Then wipe him, and start over.”

Clamps encircle his wrists and arms, and the machine descends with a grinding of gears and the scent of ozone and burned skin.

It’s not like going underwater. Under the water it’s peaceful, cold, quiet. This, this is lightning striking him from above, this is fire through his veins, lighting up every nerve with electric agony until nothing else in the world exists but high-voltage misery.

He screams until he forgets the man on the bridge, forgets the shield, forgets even the water. He screams until he doesn’t exist.

*

Two targets, level six.

He fights them both, one after the other. They’re both smart, fast, strong.

He’s stronger.

One has a jetpack with wings; he tears them apart and removes him from play. The other target is decked out in a colorful uniform that hurts the eyes, makes sparks flash in the back of the brain. He has some kind of painted metal disc. He fights with it expertly, but he blocks every strike, can predict every move before it begins. It’s almost like steps in a dance they both know, like they’ve fought before not once or twice, but dozens of times, hundreds.

The target speaks to him as if they have, as if he’s continuing a conversation they’d started before. He has no memory of it. The constant talk is distracting from the mission. Ignore the talk, ignore the man in the strangely familiar uniform…

_But you’re keeping the outfit, right?_

Distracting from the mission. Distracting from the mission. DISTRACTING FROM THE MISSION.

KNIFE.

SHOULDER.

NOW.

He grabs the piece of plastic, whatever it is the target is so desperate for. The target pins him to the floor of the flying ship, grabs his arm, pulls and pulls and _twists_ , until his arm cracks with a shock of hot pain.

Pain is distracting from the mission. He fights the hold. Fights it, until the target changes his grip, going for a choke-out. He thrashes, fights for air, fights to breathe — he can’t breathe, he’s going to drown, he’s going to drown in the open air, darkness creeps in like a malevolent tide, he’s going to…

He’s

going

to…

*

He jolts awake. Where is he? The flying ship. The mission, the fight. The target with the uniform, a white star on his chest.

The star is distracting. Shoot it.

The target falls. Gets up. Falls again, gets up again. For some reason it’s not surprising. For some unknown reason, it makes him almost… proud. And then suddenly awash with confusion, wonders why he’s feeling this, why he should be glad that the target gets up every time he gets shot, when he’s the one shooting him.

_That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight._

The target does something with the plastic chip, speaks into the comm unit on his wrist, and then stops.

The world shakes. The flying ship is being fired on. He ignores it — his mission is the target, not survival — and that’s when the ship jolts again and a falling beam sweeps him off his feet and pins him to the floor. It’s too heavy to lift. He struggles against it, fights it, can’t make it budge in the slightest.

Then the target is there. Not to kill him, no. To slip his fingers underneath solid steel and lift, lift, lift. Together, they manage to push it off.

He crawls away, panting for breath, seeing for the first time the water that they’re flying over, that they’re slowly falling toward. _I’m following him_. The water is distracting — the star is distracting — the man is distracting — everything is distracting him from his mission, he can’t push it out of his mind, something is wrong, something is wrong and that makes him _angry…_

“You know me,” the target insists, and that’s wrong. The target shouldn’t know him, the target never knows him, he always has to say who he is, the target never recognizes him… _I don’t remember. They said_ —

“No I don’t!”

“Bucky, you’ve known me your whole life,” the target says, and he’s stopped fighting, and that — that’s even more wrong than everything he’s else. The target never stops fighting. The target never runs away from a fight. The target never gives up. _They said you_ —“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

_I thought you were dead._

Anxiety rises, wraps tight bands around his chest, crawls up his throat, paralyzes his thoughts and makes the world blur. He doesn’t… he isn’t… the target… is _distracting him from his mission and he is going to be punished_. “Shut up!”

_They said you pulled me from the river._

“I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend.” The target loses his helmet. His face is flushed, and his eyes are… his eyes are blue, and tired, and he’s giving up, and that’s enraging.

He uses that rage to focus, to fight. “You're my mission!”

_I don’t know how I could ever have forgotten._

“Then finish it,” the man says, and that doesn’t make sense, nothing makes sense. “‘Cause I'm with you to the end of the line.”

_You get your orders?_

_Shipping out for England first thing tomorrow._

_Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own._

_The thing is, you don't have to._

The target falls. 

_Just go! Get out of here!_

_Not without you!_

Steve... 

_Bucky?_

_I thought you were dead._

*

Steve falls.

*

_He’s going to be alright, love._

_You’ll feel better as soon as you see him._

*

Bucky takes a breath, and dives after him.

*


	5. Acheron

*

Captain America is in his apartment.

All he wants is to get his bag and go before the approaching strike team gets here, but Steve is in his apartment, in a new uniform just as ridiculous as the first, standing cautious and reserved as if Bucky never saw him trip on a tree root and take a header down a Polish hillside and land square in a pile of bear shit. 

It’s strange, the things Bucky wakes up remembering.

Steve’s been all over the news for the past two years. His adventures with the Avengers, that bullshit in eastern Europe, and lately the Sokovia Accords. It’s a small wonder, then, that Bucky’s now being framed for bombing the UN meeting. No matter how far apart they are, circumstances always wind up sweeping them back together again. 

Bucky wonders if he’ll ever be in control of his own life, or if he’ll be forever dragged along in Steve’s current. 

“Do you know me?” Steve asks, and it’s a funny question, because Bucky’s always known Steve, even when he thought he didn’t, even when it was just a white star and a stubbornly set jaw that made him flinch. Steve was the one who’d had trouble recognizing him from one day to the next. 

“You’re Steve. I read about you in a museum,” Bucky says. He watches the hit land, making a small part of Steve bleed inside. It’s the truth, but it’s not the whole truth. 

There’s a reason he’s been avoiding Steve for two years. Part of it is the guilt he carries, the deaths hanging over his head even though he knows, _knows_ , that they weren’t his choice. 

But the rest of it is petty, and selfish: trouble follows Steve like bad luck, and Bucky’s tired of both. Even if that means avoiding Steve, even if it makes his chest hurt right in the place where he used to — when he had it, when he was capable of it, before it was ripped out of him — keep his love.

Steve argues with him, of course. Steve’s never happy unless he’s fighting, preferably with his fists, but he’ll settle for words in a pinch. “I know you're nervous. And you have plenty of reason to be. But you're lying.”

Of course he’s lying. Steve’d be an idiot for believing him. But Steve is an idiot anyway, nitpicking as the strike team, dozens strong, surrounds the building, climbs the stairs. Bucky can feel their movements through the floor, can hear them echoing through the walls. 

“You pulled me from the river,” Steve finally snaps, as if _that’s_ the most important topic of conversation they could possibly discuss right now, not the recent bombing, the impending battle. “Why?”

_Because that’s what we do for each other_ , Bucky doesn’t say. 

_Because I couldn’t stand to lose another single_ goddamn _thing to the water_ , Bucky doesn’t say.

_Because it was the first choice I made for myself since 1945_ , Bucky doesn’t say.

“I don't know,” Bucky says, because any other answer will give Steve too much ammunition. He knows Steve, has known him his whole life. He knows better than to trust him with this — not when he in uniform, shield in hand, as Captain America, when he’s not _his_ Steve.

Steve sets his jaw, calls him out on the lie. “Yes, you do.”

They fight the oncoming waves together, and it’s the same dance. The same instinctive knowledge of each other’s movements, the same anticipation, one mind in two bodies and it _hurts._ Steve’s as close as he’s been to him in twelve years, in seventy years, close enough to touch or to strike, and Bucky wants to _shake him_ , wants to shake out of his skin from the impulses competing within him. 

Bucky fights — carefully — and then he runs, and then none of it matters.

*

They put him in a cage. Steve watches them put him in the cage, muscle twitching in his jaw where he’s clenching his teeth hard enough to crack a molar, and then stalks off to find someone to yell at. 

Bucky lets his head rest against the chair back, knowing there are some reap tides that Steve just can’t fight his way out of.

The doctor shows up sometime later, and Bucky drowns under a wave of Russian trigger words, too deep underwater to even see the surface.

*

Bucky wakes up, and knows he’s been in the water. His clothes stink of river, and he has the faintest memory of falling, crashing, his head slamming against glass hard enough to crack. He wonders why he didn’t drown. Why he can’t ever seem to die.

There’s a sound. He looks up. Two men stand in front of him, far back out of reach. One of them is, “Steve.”

“Which Bucky am I talking to?” Steve asks, and the memories flood back — the doctor and his questions, the endless fights, the helicopter, Steve. Fighting Steve _again_. He is _so tired of fighting Steve_.

Steve pulled him from the river, and is looking at him now with caution in his eyes, a look he's never directed at Bucky ever before, and it burns, water thrown on smoking oil, impossible to douse.

“Your mom's name was Sarah,” Bucky finally says. He remembers a kiss in a hospital waiting room, a woman with strong hands and strong opinions and the strongest heart he’d ever had the luck to encounter, and he misses her like he misses his own mother.

Then he has to let out a short laugh, as he remembers Steve fighting hard against everything he used to be: skinny, sick, full of heart and hope and righteousness, and _short._ As if that could ever matter, as if that's all he could ever be. “You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.”

Steve looks like it’s Christmas. Looks like it’s his birthday. Looks like his best friend has been brought back to life and finally, finally recognizes him, and oh, Bucky knows how that last one feels. But it's Steve, who still has to be a shit, still has to deflect with a quirked eyebrow and, “Can't read that in a museum.”

Bucky’s been a prisoner and a tool and a mind-controlled assassin, and yet somehow he’s still more open than the man standing in front of him. He takes a breath. He has to know. “What did I do?”

Sam eventually leaves to make his phone call to someone who can help. Steve steps up to the autoclave and pulls the lever to release Bucky’s hand, carefully lifting it out before Bucky can even move, massaging gently as if it were a real hand and not made of metal and bad memories. 

“You know,” Steve says lowly, “You’re the only other person left in the world who knew my ma, who remembers her face.”

Bucky’s hand twitches unintentionally, and Steve’s grip loosens, ready to let him pull away. He doesn’t. His mind slides to Sarah and Winnie, holding him up on either side as he walked down a hospital hallway to meet his fate: two mothers raising two boys sharing one soul. He thinks of everything he knows about them, far outweighed by everything he’s forgotten, but some instinct says they would want him to tell the truth, now. “I lied when I pretended I didn’t know you.”

“I know,” Steve says, still rubbing their palms together as if Bucky could feel it, could be comforted.

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky replies. He lets his hand drop away from Steve’s, reluctant to continue a touch he can’t rightly feel. The Steve of his memories is so far away from him even now, even in this quiet moment.

“I know,” Steve says again. He must think he’s real funny. 

Bucky sighs. He’s been swept up in this — by fate, by Captain America, by the false doctor with his book of words — and there’s no way out but through. “What’s the plan, then?”

*

More fighting. Explosions. He doesn’t know any of these people, doesn’t want to hurt them, doesn’t want to be here, but he has a mission — his mission, Steve’s mission, _their_ mission — and he has to follow through.

He’s so tired.

*

“What you did all those years... It wasn't you,” Steve says, as if that’s the point. “You didn't have a choice.”

“I know,” Bucky says. He thinks about what his Rabbi used to say about choice, and about repentance, and taking responsibility is the first step. “But I did it.”

Steve hears that, and sits quietly in the cockpit for a few long moments. Then he hits a button on the console and stands, stepping around the seat and approaching Bucky in the back of the jet. Bucky sat here for a reason. Now Steve sits here, too.

“Buck,” Steve begins. He stops. He starts again. “Things are a lot different now than they were back in Brooklyn.”

Bucky shoots a glance at him, eyebrow arched. Steve ducks his head, and continues, “I’m a lot different, after everything that’s happened. I’ve been having… trouble, I guess. Getting back into the world.”

“I don’t see why,” Bucky replies flatly. He's tired. Too tired to pull Steve out of the charybdis of his own ego. “You’re only ever happy when you’re in the middle of a fight. Seems like you’ve been in a lot of fights lately.”

Steve shrugs a shoulder, head down. “You’re not wrong.”

Bucky holds back a sigh. “What are you trying to ask me?”

“I guess I wanted to ask how you’ve been getting along since escaping Hydra,” Steve says flatly. “I’m trying to show concern. It can’t have been easy to get your head straight after seventy years of—”

“Twelve, technically,” Bucky interrupts.

“What?”

“I did the math,” Bucky replies, with no small amount of twisted satisfaction. “Between the programming, the training, and the missions, the total time I was awake added up to twelve years, give or take a few. Does that make you feel better?”

“Me— Buck, this isn’t about me,” Steve says, and Bucky shoots him a look so sharp, it has Steve turning red, called out on his bullshit. “Buck, I… I didn’t…”

Steve takes a deep breath, lets it out, and says, “We’re best friends, and awful things happened to both of us. We’ve got a few minutes now where it’s just us. I’d like to spend it not fighting.”

Bucky thinks about the river, the rivers, all the waters they’ve pulled each other out of time and again, their whole lives. Thinks about what the waters have taken from them both: breath, memories, faces, second chances, whole lives.

The empty space in his chest shudders and shakes. _I don’t know how I could ever have forgotten._

He reaches out, then, and hooks an arm around Steve’s shoulders. Ignores the shocked breath and pulls Steve up next to him, like he used to do a hundred years ago when Steve was shorter and he fit perfectly under his arm. 

Now, Steve slouches, relaxes into the hold, until his head tilts just _so_ to rest against Bucky’s. He lets out a long breath.

“I know it doesn’t compare,” Steve murmurs into the quiet stillness. “I spent two years believing you were dead. It was the worst.”

“I remember. When you were thirteen, you fell into the East River,” Bucky says, matching Steve’s tone. “I spent ten minutes thinking you’d been drowned and swept away. It was the worst.”

Steve nods into his shoulder. “We’ve gotta stop doing this.”

“I’m tired of fighting, Steve,” Bucky admits quietly, bracing himself for the impact of his words on whatever Steve's idyllic plans are for the future. “I fought the war, and then I fought Hydra, and then I fought _for_ Hydra, and I’m tired. It’s why I never came to find you, after. I didn’t want you to pull me into another fight.”

Steve tenses under his arm. “I wouldn’t. Not if you asked me not to.”

“Steve, where are we right now? Are we in a jet headed to go two against five in a Super Soldier melee?” he asks. A beat passes, a pause that Steve refuses to fill because it would mean admitting that he was wrong. “There’s always another fight with you. I’m not sure you could handle living without one.”

Steve pulls away. Grits his teeth until the muscles in his jaw quiver. Bucky sees it, and then leans his head back to stare at the roof of the quinjet instead of Steve’s banked rage. 

“Fighting is all you do,” he continues, telling the ceiling the conclusions he’s come to since he escaped Hydra, took back control of his body and his skills and his mind, found a way to live in the world as a fugitive from everyone, a way to do no harm. “It’s all you’ve ever done, even before you got the serum and the shield. And I’ve been right there with you every time, but it’s not what I want anymore.”

“You mean, I’m not what you want anymore,” Steve infers, once again making it all about him. 

God, the Steve of the future is a real self-centered asshole. Bucky wonders who the hell he’s been hanging around with that’s been letting him get away with this kind of behavior all the time. He shakes his head, disengages before the shift in topic can distract them even more from their mission. “Let’s talk about this later.”

“No, let’s talk about this now,” Steve insists, all authority, one hundred percent Captain America. Because of course. Of course they should have a deep, emotional conversation right on the cusp of said Super Soldier melee battle, _Steve._

Bucky shrugs, letting the attitude and the glare roll off him like water off a duck’s back. “Thought you didn’t want to argue.”

“I’m not arguing I’m — I’m trying to understand. We used to,” Steve pauses for breath, pauses to steel himself, to make himself say whatever’s next that he so obviously doesn’t want to say, to express emotions he’d rather just take for granted. “We used to love each other more than anything else in the world.”

They did. They _did_ love each other — but the world has changed and so have they. Now, all of Steve’s attention is caught up in the serum, in Captain America, in believing that the image he sees in the concave arc of his shield is all that he is, all that he can be, all that matters. 

And Bucky knows that what he says next won't be heard, will just bounce and refract and scatter off of the intransigence of Steve’s self-reflection. He says it anyway.

“You were an artist. You loved your ma. You worked three jobs and managed to still stay in school. You—” here, a flash of memory, a brief downpour just long enough to flood the streets before trickling away just as quickly, “You helped Becca write a history paper on the French and Indian War. She got an A on it. She kissed you, she was so excited, and then she didn’t talk to you for a month out of embarrassment.” 

Steve jerks like he’s been shot, like he’s forgotten he used to be anything more than a wind-up toy soldier. He leans forward in his seat to hide it, elbows resting on his knees, and turns his head to stare at Bucky.

Bucky looks back at him and gives him the truth, all of it. The core of why he’s avoided Steve for so long, why whatever Steve wants, whatever he’s yearning for underneath that facade of stoic machismo, he isn’t going to get. 

“You don’t think any of those things are worthwhile. You were meant for more than just fighting, but you refuse to see that you can make more of a difference doing _literally_ anything else,” Bucky says, eyes locked on Steve’s, knowing him and loving him and knowing that neither of those things matter in the face of Captain America’s inertia. When you’re a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail — even the things you used to love. “So that’s all you do, all the time, and I can’t handle that anymore, Steve. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Steve’s shoulders are tense under his uniform, his hands clasped together now in the space between his knees. He’s holding his breath, waiting for it to be over, waiting for it to be safe to breathe again.

“So yeah,” Bucky concludes, maintaining eye contact, watching each word hit Steve like a bullet, making himself witness the hurt he’s causing, because there’s no other way to set this boundary, and no way to make this any less of a demolition. “I loved Steve Rogers more than anything else in the world. I always will. But I don’t know if he exists anymore. Captain America’s all that’s left.”

“And you don’t love Captain America.” 

It’s not a question.

“No,” Bucky says. “I don’t.”

He watches Steve take that. Watches him fold up all of his emotions and shove them down, hard, inside his chest, right next to where he used to keep his love. Watches him decide not to think about it, not to deal with it, not to _change_ it and that, that confirms something for Bucky, right there. Makes it real, and true.

A wave of grief crashes over him. The man who helped an eleven-year-old curly top with her homework, who painted signs for union rallies, who lit Winnie’s stove for her every Saturday morning without fail, who Bucky loved with his entire being since the moment they met, who Bucky has missed desperately at their every parting, is gone.

This is the way Steve is, now. He’s going to fight everything he sees, he’s going to muscle in and stomp around and refuse to compromise, to listen, to _talk_ , and maybe that’s fine when you’re fighting Nazis but not so much when you’re trying to agree on what to have for dinner. 

It reminds Bucky of something his mother used to say, a long, long time ago, when Bucky would come home bruised and bleeding from helping Steve lose another one of his battles. _Just because you’re right doesn’t mean you win_.

He watches the muscles in Steve’s jaw flex and jump, and then Captain America says, “Understood,” and gets up to go back to the pilot seat.

*

_I remember all of them._

Bucky’s underwater, and there’s a cyclone above him, around him, inside him; thunder and lightning and wind and rain battling for dominance, an unending cacophony of sturm und drang. No, it’s not a storm, not a storm — a battle. 

_— He’s my friend — So was I —_

The water surges around him, crushing his chest, making him gasp, making it impossible to breathe through the smoke, the churn, the repulsor blasts, then the pain — electric feedback — his arm —

_— Stay down — Final warning —_

Steve is fighting, Steve has been fighting, still, Steve never stops fighting no matter what it costs him, no matter how badly he’s losing, the last time he stopped fighting he fell into the river, surrounded by traitors and beaten, broken, shot, and stabbed by _him_ , by _Bucky_ , and he _fell_...

_— I can do this all day. —_

Steve is fighting, Steve has been fighting. For _him_ , for _Bucky_ , even though Bucky shot him, stabbed him, beat in his face and told him he’d changed too much to love anymore, broken his heart, reached into the place where he keeps his love and ripped it asunder, blasted it away. 

Steve is still fighting — fighting his friend, his teammate — to protect Bucky, despite everything he’s done, despite everything between them ruined, falling down, like a rotten pier tumbling away with the tide after one too many waves crash upon its sides...

Steve is fighting, Steve has been fighting —

Steve stops fighting.

Silence rips through the concrete cavern like a storm surge, blasting through everything in its path, leaving nothing behind except the heaving breaths of three gasping, frantic, frozen bodies. Then movement: Steve, resolutely ripping his precious shield out of Iron Man’s metal chest, and... 

Isn’t that an image. Isn’t that a sight. Isn’t that every single one of Steve’s chickens coming home to find their roost has been swept away by a hurricane.

But he’s stopped fighting. He’s stopped fighting, he’s stopped fighting and Bucky’s head is killing him but he knows Captain America never stops fighting, he’s —

Steve stands. Steps over to Bucky. Reaches for him. _Chooses him_. 

Bucky blinks, trying to focus as the world swirls around him, his head swims and then sinks and then rises for a brief moment to struggle at the surface. He takes the hand Steve offers and allows himself to be pulled out out out of the water, Steve pulls him out of the water and onto dry land, and his sea legs can’t hold him, so Steve pulls Bucky’s arm around his shoulder — earlier today Bucky tore down his hopes and ripped out his heart — and takes his weight.

“That shield doesn't belong to you,” Stark growls, and Steve ignores the taunt — ignores it! — and turns away. “You don't deserve it.”

What is the shield — the shield belongs to Captain America — Captain America belongs to the shield — they’re both tangled up and tied together in blood and battle and science fiction serum, anger and vengeance and never, ever factoring in the cost of blindly Doing Right. 

Steve and his flailing, fighting fists deserve the shield and all the bullshit that comes with it, the bullshit he’s been telling himself and the bullshit he’s been throwing himself into ever since he stepped out of his old body and into the new.

But—

The shield… the shield doesn’t deserve Steve, isn’t _worthy_ of Steve — not Steve the artist, Steve the loving son, the high school graduate, Steve the tutor of sisters, Steve who used to forget your face but never, ever let you know it. The shield could never be worthy of _that_ Steve.

“My father made that shield!”

Steve stops. Doesn’t look down or around, doesn’t move but to raise his chin the way his mother taught him, 

and

drops

the

shield.

*

“You left it,” Bucky murmurs, seated back in the quinjet, an extremely over-stocked med kit open on the bench beside him and Steve kneeling in front of him, gently daubing his face with antiseptic wipes. If there’s a strain of tetanus that can overwhelm the super serum, then on this base with five other Winter Soldiers is where it would incubate, is where it would slowly grow.

“Yeah, I did,” Steve says quietly, intent on his work, trying so hard not to hurt him.

Bucky blinks slowly, hazily. “You stopped.”

“Did that, too,” Steve agrees. Bucky remembers this tone, this voice, this particular even cadence. He hasn’t heard it in a long, long time. It wasn’t this Rogers who used it last.

“Why?”

Steve sets the gauze aside and sets himself to opening another packet, fetching a fresh sheet and starting work on Bucky’s left cheek, the vapor making his eyes briefly sting. He draws the moment out long, like a deep breath before the plunge, and then in that same voice, “I still think I was right. About the Accords. But…” 

“But?”

“It’s like what your mom used to tell me at least once a week while we were coming up: _Just because you’re right doesn’t mean you win,”_ Steve says, and Bucky’s heart clenches in pain and in familiarity and in love and in grief. “I should have found another way. I should have— you were right, what you said. Zemo manipulated me easily, because all I’ve been doing lately is fight whatever gets put in front of me. I didn’t think about how it got there.”

Steve pauses, moving on to clean a different spot on Bucky’s cheek, and then quietly admits, “I used to be better at that.”

“Fighting?” Bucky asks.

“Thinking,” Steve snorts, and there he is — there he is again, there’s the Steve, the Steve he knew, the sarcastic little shit who could occasionally, sometimes, maybe, once in a while not take himself so fucking seriously. His Steve.

“Not _much_ better.”

“Yeah, that’s what I had you for,” Steve says, with not nearly enough sarcasm, and too much some other emotion: sincerity, trust, love. Emotions that Bucky saw a hint of, a whisper of, on the helicarrier over the Potomac, a taste that sent him reeling into recollection and memory and rejection of false masters and implanted orders. Emotions he’s watched Steve sequester and swallow down over and again ever since.

And now, here they are. Laid out at Bucky’s feet like an offering. Kneeling between his knees, he takes Bucky’s face in his hands oh-so-gently and Bucky has to stop him, has to grab his wrist with his — hand — and his voice comes out too soft, too confused, too everything. “Why?”

Steve graces him with a small, broken smile. “You knew me.”

“So?”

“You knew me. I didn’t,” Steve says. He strokes a thumb across an unmarked part of Bucky’s cheek, tenderly, like the skin there belongs to someone precious to him that he’s only just now realized how much, and how fleeting. “When I was a little guy, I saw the way the big guys were powerful, the way they used that power to hurt people. I thought, if I were big, too, I could fight them, I could beat them.”

He shakes his head gently, never unlocking his gaze from Bucky’s as he lets out a wry laugh. “And then my wish came true. And I became so focused on using the serum to match the bullies hit for hit, I forgot that… the reason I was chosen in the first place was because of my...”

He glances down, like he’s ashamed to admit it, now. He recites, obviously quoting, “ _A strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.”_

_Yes_ , Bucky thinks, intensely, overwhelmingly grateful to a man he never met, who saw Steve the same way as he does.  Just, _yes_.

Steve sighs, and shakes his head, smiling bitterly, directing his shame entirely inward. “I lost sight of that. I forgot who I was, without you around to remind me.”

Bucky lets go of Steve’s wrist, then, and uses a knuckle to gently tilt Steve’s head up, so Bucky can see his eyes, so Steve can see his and everything they contain. “You dropped the shield.”

“Yeah.”

Bucky’s tired, battle-worn, probably concussed, but he’s with it enough to know, “There is no Captain America without the shield.”

“Then I guess there’s no Captain America anymore,” Steve says. “Just whatever’s left of Steve Rogers: artist, friend, high school graduate, occasional amnesiac—”

Bucky kisses him. Leans forward and presses his mouth to Steve’s, cutting him off mid-sentence, pushing past that surprised puff of air and gently, so gently, re-learning the ways that Steve makes his heart overflow, the ways that Steve can say so, so many things he hasn’t ever found the words for, the way Steve makes him feel like he’s safe on dry land and nothing can touch him, nothing can drown him, nothing can drown _them_ ever again.

Steve stopped fighting and Steve dropped the shield and Steve _bought a fucking clue_ and everything hurts but nothing, nothing hurts, because Steve is here and Steve is _listening_.

They pull apart, eventually, and Steve goes back to cleaning and bandaging Bucky’s wounds as if the talking and the emotions and the kissing never happened. Bucky picks up a fresh alcohol wipe and starts in on the gash on Steve’s cheekbone, and it’s like they’re suddenly twenty-two again, sitting at their kitchen table, patching each other up for the thousandth time after a fight.

“So,” Steve says later, when he’s just about finished clipping away the twisted metal and frayed wires splayed out from Bucky’s bared shoulder. Now it's just the two of them wearing nothing but their shorts and their scars and their hearts all out in the open, and an ease to the air that's been a century in the making. “How _have_ you been getting along since escaping Hydra?”

Bucky ducks his head, just a bit, and lets the warm waves of Steve's love wash over him. For once, he’s at a loss for words. He grabs hold of the first thought that surfaces: the plums he'd bought for Friday night, that got lost somewhere in that frantic, frenetic escape from his apartment, what feels like months ago now. “I’ve been… on Fridays I've been lighting the candles. Like Ma did. _Observe_ and _remember_ seem pretty relevant, lately.”

Steve sets down the wire cutters and brushes away the last few stray bits of metal, then leaves his palm to rest on the side of Bucky’s neck, like he can't bring himself to pull away if he doesn't have to. His hand is warm on Bucky’s bare skin, stripped of the tactical vest and body armor that'd been protecting him in battle after battle, and Bucky leans into it. 

“So next week…” Steve begins. The corner of his mouth quirks, just the barest movement and the faintest glimmer in the depths of his eyes, a reflection at the bottom of a deep, deep well, and Bucky _knows_ what utter nonsense is about to come out of his mouth, is already protesting, “Steven Grant don't you dare—”

“...You wanna do a double mitzvah?” Steve asks, and he's laughing, and Bucky hasn't heard that laugh in twelve years or seventy years and it may as well have been a thousand. But for the briefest of moments, none of it matters anymore, because Steve is laughing and it's lighting up his face like the sun after a storm, like a weight has been lifted, like a terrible load has finally been dropped and discarded without a second glance.

Bucky shakes his head, never letting his eyes lose sight of Steve’s smile, even as he protests the line that was already old by 1936, no matter how easily it may have gotten him into bed on a hundred different Friday nights. _They are here and they are alive and they are laughing._ “You know it only counts as a mitzvah if we're married.”

“Well, then,” Steve says, mirth fading away as his voice shifts into the intense, quiet tone that usually precedes a whole hell of a lot of trouble for someone else. “I guess we'll have to see about that.”

*

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: A mitzvah is a commandment from god, such as keeping Shabbat or having sex. Sex on Shabbat gets you twice the god points. *double thumbs up*
> 
> The five rivers of the Underworld:
> 
> \- Styx (death)  
> \- Phlegethon (fire)  
> \- Lethe (forgetfulness)  
> \- Cocytus (lamentation/traitors)  
> \- Acheron (woe)

**Author's Note:**

> Yay complete fic! I'm about to finish up and defend my master's thesis -- which involves All The "Con"crit from All The Professors -- so please leave a comment and offset some of my grad school angst. <3


End file.
